Bulk content purchases

Please be aware that the Google Play For Education - Purchase Order program is no longer available. You can still purchase apps using one of the supported methods outlined in Buy content.

When you make a bulk content purchase to be sent to student devices, you'll need to purchase one license of the content for each student device. A license is one copy of the content and permission to use it on a single device. Watch a video on purchasing content.

Note: It is important that students are not using their devices when content is sent. Other teachers may be using the devices in their lessons, and it would be distracting for students to get app download notifications while working on an assignment and/or activity. It is advisable to send content while students are at lunch, at recess, or at home (after school).

To use a purchase order for a bulk content purchase in Google Play for Education:

Enter the number of licenses you need in the QUANTITY field. Then select the Play for Education balance (each purchase order will have a unique ID) that you want to use for payment under PAYMENT METHOD and click Continue.

On the final page, review the details of your purchase and click the Buy button to complete the transaction.

Note: For the first purchase, the button will say Accept and Buy, because you are accepting the Terms of Service for Google Payments. You will also see a link to the Terms of Service on this page so that you can review them before accepting.

Under Send to students, enter the names or email addresses of the people who should receive the content and click the Done button.

You can also enter a Google Group address or a contact group. Note that Organizational Units (OUs) can't be used to send content through Google Play for Education. For more information about setting up groups, see Create groups.

If you don't want to assign the licenses at this time, leave the box blank and click the Done button.

You may notice in the details of your purchase that sales tax has been applied. If your school is tax-exempt, we will refund the sales tax amount to your account after the purchase.

If you’ve previously ordered a piece of content and want to assign it to additional users:

Click on Manage Content in the left-side navigation bar and then the content type tab under the search box (for example, to assign an Android app, select Android Apps).

Find the content you want to assign, and select Assign for Books or Install for Android or Chrome Apps. In the next screen, enter the names or email addresses of the people who should receive the content and click the Done button.

You can also enter a Google Group address or a contact group. Note that Organizational Units (OUs) can't be used to send content through Google Play for Education. For more information about setting up groups, see Create groups.

Note: You can also use the assignment feature to re-assign a license for paid content that was accidentally purchased twice for the same user or an Android App that was unassigned from a student who is no longer using the app.

After purchasing content, you can delegate authority to provision those licenses to another user. This allows users without purchasing authority to allocate licenses directly to students. Note: Only paid content can be delegated, since any user can already allocate free content.

Click on Manage Content in the left-side navigation bar and then the content type tab under the search box (for example, to delegate licenses for an Android app, select Android Apps).

Select Click to delegate assignment in the right hand column.

Add the users who will be assigning licenses to students and select Done.

Once you’ve made some purchases, these are the admin features you may want to use:

Manage Content - Select a content type to review which content has been sent, add more licenses for previously sent content, and delegate license assignment to other users. (Teachers will see only the tab for free content licenses.)

My Devices - If you have more than one device, choose which device receives content from Google Play for Education.

Students - See what content has been sent to which student accounts. You can use this for troubleshooting if you need to resend an app or a book.